If I Keep My Eyes Closed
by bymidnightflame
Summary: Keith struggles in the wake of Shiro's loss, unable to reconcile a classified MIA status with moving on in life. Sheith. AU.


Author's note: This all got started by listening to Halsey's Eyes Closed, and then it turned a bit bigger than the drabble I had in mind. Both versions of the song available are amazing.

Now in fair warning, there is Keith/Lance in this and it is not a happy sort of thing. Please take that into consideration before reading, for this is ultimately a Sheith fic, and there is a lot of pining/hurt and looking at the ways we deal with loss and moving on.

* * *

He's gone.

The months had piled on, one after the other, until there was only a mountain of time looming over him. Ever higher, ever reminding, always and forever telling him that there are things lost to the world that you may never ever recover no matter how deep you dig or how far you search or how many bargains you try to make with God. Sometimes, lives went out - just like that - like closing your fingertips over the flicker of a flame, and with the fleeting sensation of pain across skin, your whole world goes dark.

He's been gone longer than his mind wants to track, but his heart has been carving marks for every passing day across its walls. Keith imagines this is the bleed-out effect of being in love. You hand over all of what you are, hoping this one person won't crush the entirety of your existence, only to find out the universe itself can manage that just fine on its own.

Shiro is gone. He's been gone, and the days have spilled into months which cascaded into years. Two and a half to be exact. And they say there's no coming back from those sorts of things, if one wanted to give weight to the words whispered across the countertops of bars, in voices too often slurred, spoken with looks at times apologetic, at others haunted.

M.I.A.

What a fucked up notion.

A person doesn't simply go missing. Something happens to them, too often the wrong kind of something. The sort of something that left him with an apartment in Shiro's name that had to be transferred to his, with a closet full of clothes far too big for him to fill in form but memory had no issues with wearing. The same sort of something that had left other soldiers grim-faced and emotionally boarded-up as Keith had accepted the remnants of Shiro's belongings from the base because he had been the only person listed as family.

Shiro hadn't been just family. He had been the other half of his soul. . .but Keith knows you can't simply put that on a piece of paper, especially not one coded in the regimented style of the military.

There is right, and there is proper, and maybe they hadn't been either of those. But what does it matter now? Shiro's gone, and Keith is still left here standing.

* * *

"You have an order, right?"

It's Saturday night, and like any half-decent bar nestled along the boardwalk, The Blue Moon is packed thicker than brambles in the underbrush, with some patrons just as sharp as its thorns in their demands and others as sweet as its berries as they look to get drunk on someone else's dime. Keith finishes topping off the last of his previous order, throwing in the requisite cherry after a splash of Sprite, and sets it on the bar. It's swiped cleanly away without so much as a thank you, but at least they left a decently generous tip.

Some nights he likes to think he'd take common courtesy over money, but reality tells him money gets him more for his life. At the end of the day, you can't pay bills with smiles and thank you's. The world simply isn't that kind.

With the quirk of an eyebrow and a wipe of a dishrag along the countertop, Keith decides to ask once again, a little more pointedly this time.

"What are you having?"

There's bar space being wasted by someone not willing to order anything, a deadening prospect for tips.

"I thought you would know that by now."

"Sometimes orders change, Lance."

"When have I ever been anything but consistent?"

The question comes with a smile, that nauseatingly confident sort of smile that screams more about inadequacy than it does about any honest belief in what's being sold. But the guy is good enough - he always pays his tabs, leaves a tip, and never stirs up any trouble even if he does get shot down more times than an alien spacecraft in Galaga.

Tonight he's dressed in a grey T-shirt, Lake Tahoe Ski Patrol in faded white lettering across the chest, and a pair of faded dark wash jeans. Keith learned three months ago that Lance had never once touched anything with the military aside from its fashion, but he had, in fact, spent several winters teaching the rich and sometimes famous how to ski. How he had ended up on the East Coast in some beach town defined more by its military presence than its vacation spot potential is something Keith has yet to learn. He has no intention of asking any further about it either. In fact, most of the information he has learned about the man had been dropped like coins into a fountain, tidbits tossed away in the hope they might earn more but with the full realization little was likely to be bought by them.

Lance would talk. Keith would shoot him a look, hand him his drink, and he would move on to the next patron like he hadn't broken any sort of contract prolonged contact seemed to inspire. It never stopped Lance from coming back, or from throwing more words at him.

Hope is a funny, tenacious little creature like that. Most of the time, Keith thinks it has a set of razor-sharp teeth, sinking into the flesh of any who would give it credence, instead of those thin wings, translucent and fragile as a dragonfly's as it tries to hover under the weight of all it would have a heart believe.

"Tennessee honey it is," Keith responds as he turns on heel to stare down the rows of liquor behind him. He finds the bottle easily enough, tucked on the second shelf, and pulls it with practiced ease. As the ice clinks sharply against the bottom of the glass and the amber liquid follows, Keith catches Lance's gaze. A brief thing, but a meeting nonetheless. The corner of Lance's mouth quirks upwards as he slows the pour to a fine trickle of gold.

"Generous as always," Lance laughs.

Keith gives a soft snort in response before adding another splash of whiskey.

He usually doesn't see Lance again, not until another few nights have passed and he's got the time to kill. At least, that's how the explanation typically goes, not that Keith has ever cared one way or the other. Tonight shows itself the anomaly that all human relationships end up being, where one person takes a step outside of the perimeters loosely lined in chalk around them all and creates a new potential area for growth. Sometimes it's wanted. Sometimes you don't know you want it until it happens.

And other times? Well, those can be complete disasters.

Keith isn't entirely sure how this one is going to turn out. It's three in the morning, the bar lights are flickering in the throes of their nightly death, and Keith is standing here with Lance leaning against his ocean blue Camaro. (Keith swears he must have something of military machoism in his veins because who the fuck drives that around here and isn't gunning some army get-me-off mentality?) Lance's gaze is locked with all the precision of a sniper's scope on Keith's figure.

He can't possibly cut an impressive one, not after a night of sweating it back behind a bar in the middle of summer. Keith had long since pulled his hair back into a low ponytail, a short stub of one that has the gathered ends constantly tickling at the nape of his neck. With the humidity hanging heavy in the alley and beach breezes but a distant memory, his skin still feels wet, his heart oddly heavy, and his patience clipped right to the quick.

Tugging at the hem of his tank top, Keith sinks back into his heels, arms folding over his chest a breath later, and he meets Lance's stare with all the direct challenge of a wolf standing over a midwinter's kill. It's only after another oppressive moment, set to the gentle wash of ocean over sand, that Lance's eyes break away and shift to a point just beyond Keith's shoulder.

Standing at the mouth of the alley Keith had emerged from is another man, tall with dark skin, darker eyes and forearms wide and powerful as a pitbull's jaw. An eagle screams freedom over his right bicep, talons grappling the good old American flag just beneath the edge of a T-shirt that looks two sizes too small for the guy. Lance flicks his gaze over towards the man then turns it back on Keith with a smile.

"Thought I could offer you a ride," he says.

Keith cants his head, eyebrow raised. "I never asked for one."

"You sure about that?" Lance asks, attention once more on the man lingering in Keith's shadow.

Something pulls the darkness together in Keith's eyes. He stalks forward, lips curled in a snarl, and violates every bit of personal space Lance could possibly try to claim for himself.

"What exactly do you think you're doing?"

"Keeping you from another mistake."

"Who made you my guardian angel?" Keith hisses. He can feel the fury boiling in his core, and he doesn't quite understand where it all comes from, doesn't know what devil concocted it and set it loose within his bloodstream, but he's beginning to feel the full heat of it churning in his veins.

Maybe because there is something like truth swimming in Lance's words, and it's snagged a good chunk of his reality with a bite sharp and remorseless.

Maybe it's because he knows Lance sees a hell of a lot more than he lets on.

Maybe because he can see all the ways he'll bleed out from this.

Lance leans right into Keith, unafraid. "If you're that intent on having a body in your bed, choose someone better than whatever leftovers your bar had to offer."

"Someone like you, huh?"

A shrug greets that question.

"You could do a lot worse."

It feels familiar.

* * *

Heat sparks along his skin, where lips inspire fire and teeth tear open the lids to his memories, spilling them into his blood. He remembers then the feel of fingertips, calloused and practiced in their touch as they drift along his throat, down his chest, over his hips. He arches right into that touch, as lips part for a gasp.

No name leaps from his tongue, but there is pleasure in the sound all the same. As his mouth gives itself over to a smile, Keith sinks his fingers into dark hair, nails scraping along scalp, and tosses his head back against the pillow.

Because when he closes his eyes, he sees the way lips pull back into a pleased smirk, excited by the reaction that every touch has earned. He sees the shock of white hair disappearing into black as Shiro's head descends along his body, mouth trailing kisses, fingers sliding in and out of him in a slow, easy rhythm.

He wants. Oh, how he wants.

And how easy it is to give himself over.

Fingers curl in tight as heat sinks down along the length of his erection, slick and hot and promising full satisfaction. His grip tightens and ends with him tugging on the hair tangled between his fingers. A moan vibrates right through his cock, spiraling up towards his stomach.

Keith breathes out one harsh exhale, then opens his eyes.

Sunk between his legs, Lance has two fingers working their way in and out of him, while his mouth is wrapped around the head of his cock. There's the slightest curve of a smirk greeting him as Keith glances down. Something splinters in his core, spilling blood and coating every ounce of memory with it. He jerks his hips upward, not hard enough to choke but enough to get the point across: he is done being toyed with _so move on already_.

Lance pulls his mouth off with a wet pop of sound and slides his fingers out in a way that leaves Keith feeling hollow to the very core of him. He sinks back onto his knees, his gaze running right down the length of Keith's body. Not an ounce of shame defining the act. It's the look of the starving, eyes bright at the prospect of devouring, and part of Keith thinks that in another time, another place Lance could have been the one to save him from himself. Not quite a savior but a saving grace nonetheless.

As Lance pulls down the zipper of his jeans, Keith drops his head back down to the pillow and closes his eyes again.

When the darkness consumes every ounce of the reality around him, and the press of fingers sink against his hips, he remembers how a voice could dip low and growl with hunger, how the very sound itself could scald his better senses and remind him that some things were worth burning for.

He closes his fist around the hem of his tank top, thin trails of red blazing across his skin where nails had raked, hard and unforgiving. Another gasp echoes over his tongue as a different sort of heat sinks into him. Somewhere in the darkness, Keith hears his name breaking over the edge of desire.

And he remembers that some of those things were even worth dying for.

* * *

Laughter is all he hears, and he thinks he wants to it to stop. He also wants it to keep on streaming down, spilling through his mind endlessly with its warmth, wants it to continue filling up his soul with the beauty that it is.

"Shiro. . ."

Keith is sitting on the edge of the kitchen's lone island, dressed in only Shiro's favorite T-shirt (the black one with Death & Co scrawled in flowing script along the edge of the right sleeve) and a pair of red boxer briefs. He keeps kicking his heels against the cabinet doors beneath him like some sort of rescue force might come tumbling out and save him from himself in this. He's trying not to smile.

Really, he is.

But Shiro is standing there, suppressing his laughter beneath a hand clamped over his mouth and his eyes lit up like steel meeting the forge, in nothing but black boxers and chocolate sauce. It's running down his left forearm, dark rivulets that keep dripdripdropping onto the kitchen floor, one or two wayward beads of it shattering over Shiro's foot and painting his toes sticky-sweet.

"So. . ." Shiro coughs out around another would-be laugh. The corners of his mouth are quivering with the effort to deny every ounce of amusement racking his cells silly at that moment. "Do I. . .I mean, maybe we should. . ."

Keith can barely keep a straight face at the way Shiro's trying desperately not to smile himself.

". .. skip the chocolate sauce?"

"You can't have sundaes without chocolate sauce, Shiro. It's an integral part of what makes a sundae a sundae."

Keith's voice trembles with laughter, barely containing the absolute lie that statement had been. They could have ice cream without chocolate sauce, because sundaes could be concocted any number of ways, just like love could come in a variety of forms and all of them could be just as satisfyingly sweet.

"You can still have it." Shiro waggles his eyebrows.

Keith chokes on his next laugh.

Ever the one to follow-up on his word, Shiro steps over to where Keith has planted himself, holding his forearm out for the taking. There's death by love and death by chocolate, but no one ever said death would come in the form of a man grinning at his own failure and offering it like water to the sun-scorched. Keith keeps his gaze on Shiro's though, almost thoughtful as he considers the proposition being made.

Perhaps he had died months ago, back when he had agreed to be a part of Shiro's life. The everyday parts of it that included waking up together in bed, sharing the same cramped bathroom, and witnessing the horrific end of a chocolate syrup bottle on a Friday night. That has to be it - herein lies Keith Kogane, bartender and lover, his heart sold to a man with a champion grin and a heart of gold.

Died and reborn as more than he had ever been or thought he could be. He's the phoenix's best kept secret. Sometimes you perished in fire just to craft yourself as something stronger, a hardier soul that having met its match was melted down so the colors could marble together. And Keith imagines that he and Shiro. . .well, their souls are made of silver streaking like lightning over the black of midnight skies.

Made by flame into something they always should have been - whole.

Keith wraps his fingers around Shiro's wrist then leans in to swipe his tongue over the nearest streak of chocolate. Eyes still locked on Shiro's, he licks again then pauses. He takes a slow breath, listening to the way Shiro's breathing has gone ragged, then very quietly, with lips parted and poised for another excursion of tongue, he asks, "How long will this deployment be?"

Shiro's fingers curl in towards his palm at that, light but the movement enough that Keith can feel the muscles contracting beneath his grip.

"Eight months. Maybe nine. . ."

Keith kisses the jut of bone at Shiro's wrist. Says nothing at all in the wake of those words, because sometimes there just aren't enough syllables in the human language to convey the things a heart fears.

"I'm coming home, Keith," Shiro whispers. His words are gentle, considerate of all the ways a heart could break over things like _eight or nine months_.

Keith wants to be angry at him for that, for handling him like he means something.

There are days when he wants to be angry at the world for showing him he can belong to something more than this closed-off notion of self-preservation, for the fact that he can love someone who can love him back completely and still somehow love the world enough to fight for it as well. He wants to be angry, but all he finds is that flame dancing in his palm that tells him its work has already been done - he's already forged himself into a person different from his yesterdays.

Shiro's lips are against his temple. His words are warm, and there's still chocolate on his forearm, smearing across Keith's hand as it slips over skin.

"Cross my heart," Shiro murmurs. "And hope to die. . ."

Something wrenches tight in Keith's chest. A bolt put on too tightly, and he'll never be able to get it out again. Maybe it's pinned those words to his heart for eternity.

Eight or nine months can seem like forever some days.

"Takashi. . .take that back."

Keith hears his voice like some distant echo. It's his, undeniably so, but it's distorted, weak in all the wrong ways, rough in all the honest ones.

"Keith?"

"Take it back. . .please."

Shiro's hand is on top of his head, pulling him into an embrace. Keith reaches around him, sliding his arms beneath Shiro's and curving them up around his back. Fingers curl over the edge of Shiro's shoulders as Keith presses his ear against the space of Shiro's heart.

It still beats a steady rhythm. One, two, three. . .the only sound that could ever align a heart and soul, the only sound whose absence could break both.

"I'm not going to die." Fingers slip beneath Keith's chin, tipping his head up. Shiro is smiling, full of a confidence Keith wants blindly to believe in. "I'm coming back to you."

When Shiro kisses Keith, he tastes cocoa, and he tastes sweet. He tastes the promise of eternity as only one human being can offer it to another.

"I'm coming back for you."

* * *

"Shiro?"

Lance's lips are soft as they write the inquiry against his mouth. Keith doesn't answer the kiss being asked for, just like he doesn't initially answer the question being posed before him. Instead, he leans back, sinking against his heels and Lance's knees, brow knitting.

"What are you talking about?"

A shrug starts off Lance's response. He gestures over to the corner where a large black rucksack sits. It's stuffed with things Keith only went through once - a few spare uniforms, a pair of old boots, several well-worn paperback books that had made every deployment, photos that had once decorated the space Shiro had been given to call his in a country that wasn't his own. Bits and pieces of the soldierly necessary and those smaller reminders that made any place home. Glinting silver and sitting right on top, a pair of dog tags rests, immaculately kept.

"That's what it says on the bag over there."

Keith doesn't even bother looking over at it all. He knows each piece, even having only shuffled through it once (memory is awful like that, in the way it can carve the deepest of pains with one go while it takes months to barely etch the hint of others). He knows the way Shiro's name sits embroidered in white letters across the side of the bag. It had been something of a joke, white for white, but Shiro had loved the gift nonetheless. Licking at his lips, he shuts his eyes and huffs out a harsh laugh.

"You said it yourself - it's a bag."

Fingers start skating down his spine now, their touch light and curious, skipping down his vertebrae like Lance was trying to avoid all the cracks in his being. Fingertips circle around one bony point, hesitate, then leap to the next. Keith arches into the touch, closing his eyes as he leans back in. His lips find Lance's throat; his tongue tastes Shiro.

The hand at his back settles more firmly against his skin, palm flat and wide across the base of his spine. When the breath hitches above him, Keith lets himself smirk. Teeth close in around skin.

"How come you aren't wearing those dog tags?"

His eyes snap open. His tongue lingers just behind his teeth, rebuked by reality. Keith doesn't move, but shifts his gaze upwards, catching blue eyes as they lower to meet his gaze.

"I see them on you, every night I'm at the bar," he says, softly. Like he's skirting around accusations but can't avoid the collision no matter how hard he tries. "I've never once lifted them from your skin."

Keith narrows his eyes, something ruthless pulling his mouth into a smile. "Is taking my clothes off not enough for you?"

"It's faster than the rest of your armor."

Something drops in the pit of his stomach. Keith doesn't hear the sound of shattering.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

And Lance gets it. Keith can see that much as his jaw slackens and his lips curve in full reconciliation. The hand at his back lifts, fingers trailing light over skin by way of appeasement. When Lance tips his head, Keith opens up the line of his neck for him. Lance's lips ghost along his skin, roaming towards his ear, and when they finally settle there, warm and firm, Keith feels the chill in his core before it ever strikes his spine.

"Whatever makes it easy for you, hotshot."

* * *

"How long has he been gone?"

"Who?"

"Shiro."

It takes effort not to stop wiping down the glass he currently has in his hand, effort Keith isn't sure he wants to make at this moment. He flicks his gaze over to where Lance is sitting, index finger running a smooth line around the rim of his drink.

Tennessee honey.

"Three years next month."

Blue eyes light up with surprise, and Keith thinks there could almost be something pretty about the way honesty sits on Lance. Seconds later, the shock eases away, his gaze darkening again and boring holes right into Keith's heart. The smirk that leaps to Lance's lips next is the bitter bite scalding its way down into his gut.

"That's a long time, don't you think?"

Tennessee honey.

It's not really a true whiskey.

* * *

"Get out."

Shiro is stretched out beneath him, hands tucked behind his head and completely shameless in his stripped down state. Keith sinks down over his hips, pressing palms flat to Shiro's chest as he rocks back once, twice. He doesn't even bother hiding the smile tugging on his lips.

"Hmm. . .and on what charges am I being expelled for?" Shiro asks, quite seriously at that, as he slinks a finger beneath the waistband of Keith's boxer briefs and pulls the elastic back threateningly.

"Let's start with that awful haircut - "

 _SNAP_!

Keith's hips jerk in response, eyes narrowing at the stinging sensation radiating out across his lower back. It's the second time this morning, and the very reason he is sitting here now, straddling Shiro and listing all of the reasons he should walk out of the bedroom and leave Keith to his peace and quiet.

"It's the military's very finest."

Keith snorts at that."Then, how about the fact we had to resort to eating Lucky Charms for dinner last night because someone burnt the roast?"

Shiro's fingers start their climb along his ass once more, index finger sent out like a cavalry scout to run the elastic band of his underwear. It almost has Keith lamenting the fact that Shiro is oh-so-naked beneath him. Perhaps then he could have returned the favor.

"So? I said I could grill not roast. . .and I still fed you."

"Hmph. Maybe," Keith muses. Before Shiro's fingers can incite another riot across his skin, he rolls his hips, one easy up and back and down again that has Shiro biting at his lower lip and slapping Keith on the ass instead. "But your worst crime is that smile. . ."

"Which one?"

"This one. . . ."

And he _is_ smiling, that one bright bit of smile that's thoroughly unrepentant in its love and tinged with the bare hint of waking desire. That same one that is always telling Keith that no matter what comes their way or the distance that divides their bodies there is a galaxy inside of him that Shiro calls home.

Because Shiro sees stars across his skin, and every night he traces his way back home by their light.

Keith lowers himself down, and with every inch that collapses between their figures, Shiro's hand glides up along his spine, no swath of skin lost to his touch.

"You love it."

Shiro is smiling, his gaze is warm with affection, and there is comfort in his touch. It is everything Keith bottles up and stores among the better parts of his memories.

"Yeah. . .I love it. That's the problem. . ."

* * *

The room is a disaster. Laundry, waiting for something clean to be made of it, sits piled on the desk, swallowing stacks of letters and oddball trinkets Keith never knew what to do with. Pillows, having vacated the bed, now sit slumped alongside it, strangled by the flat sheet. The duvet barely clings to the bottom edge of the mattress, turned inside out and exposing itself to the ceiling like newly flayed skin.

Only the rucksack sits undisturbed, this odd halo of the immaculate encircling it.

"I don't want this."

Keith is sitting on the edge of the bed, his fingers endlessly tangling and disentangling themselves from the silver chain around his neck. With every release, a soft metallic _clink!_ cries out.

"What exactly is _this_?"

"That's exactly my point!" It explodes out of him, as he gestures towards Lance. As if that alone held the explanation of everything that has ever gone wrong in his life. Keith lifts his gaze, finally meeting Lance's head on. He doesn't want to acknowledge the pain swimming in its depths, or that he could be the cause, that maybe he's been the cause of his own pain all along.

"What is any of this? You come over, we fuck, you leave. I've never even seen you in the morning. And you want to say I'm not in this?!"

A low growl finally forces Lance's lips to part.

"You're damn right I'm not invested. How could anyone be with someone who doesn't even look at them? I mean _really_ look at them, Keith." Lance shakes his head, lips parting though nothing comes out. Not at first. Just this rough expulsion of air, steeled with incredulity as Lance waves his hand uselessly at the space around him. ". . . .Let's not go pretending this was meant to go anywhere because as long as those letters remain beneath his name, you will always be in love with him."

It's a shotgun to the chest, fragmentation on the impact, and Keith doesn't even know where to go to begin digging out the particles of pain that blow leaves behind.

"How can you even say that?"

He hates the way hurt claws his voice raw.

Lance is shaking his head again, laughing in a way that echoes in the hollow of Keith's chest. It's not honest.

But maybe nothing here has been.

"You know. . .that thing you seem so pissed about? How I'm never around in the morning? Did you know that you do this thing when you're sleeping?" Lance licks at his lips, runs his hand roughly through his hair. He's a perfect picture of a star set on imploding - too much energy, too much dying. "You want to be close, you want those arms around you, but when you go looking for it? You're not saying my name."

Maybe this is the first true thing that's hit either of them in the nameless _this_. And it's a lot like love when it sits there bleeding and gaping open before you. Keith knows this part. He knows what it means to sit there and watch something die.

He's just never run it through with his own hands.

Lance is smiling. It's this broken, wounded thing that parades as cruel just to convince itself it's stronger than this.

"And that's not even the worst part, honestly. It's the way you say it. . ." He drags a hand over his mouth. Silence sinks over them. Lance shifts his gaze, then drops his hand. It's a lot like watching a bird tumble lifeless from the skies. "Fuck, Keith. . .if you ever said my name the same way you said his in those moments, I would never leave. I couldn't. . ."

"Lance. Stop."

"I couldn't because you make him sound like home."

"Get out."

There's something caustic in his lungs, burning away cells and air, the very essence of life itself. He wants to cut it out of his chest if it would only make breathing easier.

"That's it?" Lance laughs it out, the question light with disbelief.

"Yeah, that's it." Keith fixes his gaze on the bedroom door. "You're a good fuck. I'm a good lay - that's it."

"Your terms. Not mine."

"Fuck off, Lance."

"A word of advice? You get to decide to move on. Not some ghost of whoever you were when you were with him."

". . . get out."

* * *

It's been two weeks since he last saw Lance. Keith wants to think this isn't a problem, but it is. Or that's something his conscience keeps insisting upon because while everything had been a disaster from the start (too many wrong reasons and bad choices), he can't deny having shoved his hands into the entire mess of it.

But that's the thing about wanting to connect with someone else - you usually leave someone bleeding out on the floor in the end. Good intentions, best-laid plans? In the end, none of that matters.

All it takes is being in the wrong place at the wrong time to go missing.

All it takes is going missing to hollow out your very soul.

All it takes is pretending you don't need anything else to break another heart.

Two weeks have gone by, and honestly, there is nothing in his life that has changed. He goes to work, the air remains stifling in its humidity, and the bar keeps crowded. He doesn't give himself the time to think, simply pours the next shot, cashes out one tab and starts another.

The bell attached to the beachside door chimes as someone opens it. Keith doesn't even bother to look up, too well versed in the eager beach-goer's mindset to know what's being sought.

"We're not serving yet. Come back in another forty-five minutes then we'll be open."

He plucks another orange from the basket on the counter and resumes his task of cutting perfect rim-garnishing slices. The knife cuts into rind and sinks easily into flesh. Keith lifts his hand after a moment to lick at the juice draining over his wrist.

It occurs to him then that there had been no sound aside from the bell, and there had been no second chiming to announce a departure. He flicks his gaze towards the door.

There are moments in a man's life where the seconds pile high, one on top of the other, and it leaves you wondering how it is time can accumulate so fast, how it can grow into something monstrous and reminding. And then there are moments when the seconds run themselves so thin it seems like you can see into forever.

Keith feels his heart stumble into an abnormal rhythm, beat after beat tripping over itself until he thinks this might be the very end of his existence. A human heart can't drum that erratic and still insist on supporting life.

It can't.

You need a heart to live, as you need lungs to breath, and he feels like neither of those are working right because he doesn't remember that last moment he drew in air or the last normal beat his heart took.

He's still standing here though.

The knife is abandoned on the cutting board, right alongside the orange split in half. His hand moves to clutch at the chain around his neck, and something breaks. Something always breaks in these moments because he's suddenly breathing again.

"Shiro."


End file.
